The Olympia City Council wants it both ways. On the one hand they want to honor Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights work he did on racism AND at the same time pursue modern-day segregation laws for the downtown against the poor. At the time of MLK's assassination, he was putting together A Poor People's Campaign which worked towards making it reality for America that everyone's basic needs were met, including shelter, clothes, food, education and a living-wage. But the City Council doesn't value those civil rights goals. Instead, in collaboration with the police department and some downtown businesses, they are pursuing other policies, the goals of which are to segregate the poor and homeless from downtown by criminalizing their poverty. Their ordinances include a ban on car camping, a ban on camping, a trespassing ordinance that would allow the police or park personnel to bar individuals from entry to public parks, a no panhandling zone and a no sale of fortified wine zone.

But, why? Let's see who is behind these ordinances. Right now only special interests (businesses and the police) have got these ordinances on the fast track for the summer of 2002. The efficiency of the system when no public representation has been taken or sought after is staggering. Benito Mussolini in defining Fascism said that the role of government is to do what business and the corporation demand. His form of government was to eliminate democratic representation in policies and turn the control of the economy over to business leaders. Sound familiar?

The council has decided to host a Community Conversation on the issue and has framed it, with the police's help, as a discussion on downtown "SAFETY." Downtown is safe! Just ask those that frequent it and by their own reports, the police admit that downtown's crime has not increased. So why this discussion about safety? Imagine you were part of an agency that was asked to come up with solutions to a 'problem', wouldn't you figure out a way to increase the power and budget of your agency? That is what the police have done - they've gone through the looking glass and come out with the plan that serves them: our officers don't have enough to do downtown because people aren't committing enough crime there, so we need new laws and new crimes to keep us busy and the jails fuller rather than cutting back the agency. Problem=solution. Just imagine what would happen if service providers were charged with the task of coming up with solutions to poverty.

The biggest factor in the commercial decline of downtown Olympia was when city officials in their grand wisdom and greed enacted a policy of SPRAWL and allowed the Capital Mall to go in in the late 70s/early 80s. There used to be department stores downtown, but the city made it easy for them to vacate the area and relocate to strip malls and one-stop shopping centers in surrounding areas. Like a sleight of hand trick, the council is blaming and penalizing the poor for the economy with one hand, while concealing their Sprawl policies (which they have yet to reverse). The council could pass ordinances restricting big-box stores and do wonders with Zoning Regulations that would shift commercial focus back downtown. But they don't because it's easier to pick on the vulnerable and shift the blame than to do the right thing.

The problem of a staggering economy is larger than a handful of people in downtown Olympia. Market forces still haven't effectively dealt with poverty or eliminated it (some say they can't) for centuries. Everyone participates in the economy - it's just a matter of degrees with some contributing and benefitting more than others. Obviously those with high-paying jobs benefit more from the economy and can participate in it more than a single mother who gets $440.00 a month for welfare, a part-time minimum wage worker or someone unemployed. Olympia wants to play favorites and control who is downtown with these ordinances and segregate out those who don't have enough money to spend there.

But downtown is not defined solely as a consumer district. Olympia has a thriving cultural base that is localized downtown. Ongoing music and art, a hoping nightlife and bustling daytime as well as packed special events give Olympia its flavor that the economy only profits from. The proposed ordinances not only does nothing to encourage this, but actually threatens its success.

History points out a thematic consistency in the treatment of poor people in society, with them being punished for their economic disadvantage and generally being singled out for unfavorable treatment. Our society is marred by depths of poverty that we have not seen in generations, and our federal and local government's unprecedented manner of criminalizing the poor is taking us back to the barbarity of previous centuries. In western societies, there has been a long history of anti-homeless and anti-poor legislation, which began in the 14th century to keep laborers tied to their masters during times of labor shortage.

By the 16th century, however, they had been applied more generally against the homeless. For example, an English law required that any arrested 'idle person' found guilty of vagrancy should be whipped in the marketplace until bloody. This law marked a changed attitude towards people who were unattached to a particular place or position. Beggars and vagrants who were once respected as the children of God came to be seen as a threat to society with its loyalty to productivity and material wealth. A new concentrated era of legislation occurred when American slaves were emancipated and were no longer tied to a plantation or other particular place and could presumably freely move about. Jim Crow laws sprang up as if out of need to control the movements, position, and social/economic participation of blacks in the interest of preserving the ol' economic order's beneficiaries.

In the America of the Puritans through the end of the nineteenth century, "sin" was a major crime. Offenses ranged from heresy to open sexuality, from inter-racial associations to gambling, punishable by the stockades and such. But today, as definitions of sin slip, slide and seem increasingly irrelevant, we have pathologized different characteristics, these based on economic and political power. The body may not be flayed in modern-day America, but the punishment still occurs as the threat to economic order has all but replaced moral reason. On display and under attack are the new "criminals" including youth, single mothers, people of color, prisoners, the disabled and the overarching poor. In the past decade, cities have increasingly moved toward enacting and enforcing laws that specifically criminalize poverty and homelessness in response to their concern about the use of public space and the faltering economy. Cities enact and enforce these criminal laws as "quick-fix" solutions to remove poor people from sight, rather than addressing the underlying causes of poverty and homelessness. And on it goes to present day Olympia.

In the 18th century, Anatole France observed that the equality of law in his day did not amount to much for poor people. He sarcastically observed that the law in its "majestic equality, prohibits rich and poor alike from begging on the streets and sleeping under bridges." This type of illusory or formal equality has been consistently overturned by the courts in its consideration of civil rights. Discriminatory intent can easily be cloaked in apparently neutral rules. Legislation which unjustifiably draws discriminatory distinctions, or which has the effect of creating discriminatory distinctions between a disadvantaged group and more advantaged members of society and which perpetuates the disadvantage of the group runs counter to the idea of civil rights and popular opinion. It does not matter whether Olympia's laws explicitly mentions homeless people or poor people, if the effect is discriminatory, then the law is nothing more than legally sanctioned bigotry and public segregation.

American history is full of laws that created a double standard between 'the advantaged' and women, natives, immigrants, Gays & Lesbians - and who can forget the Jim Crow laws? Laws were enacted and targeted at people based on the color of their skin to keep them from certain public activities or from interfering with the 'advantaged' consumer. Other laws like anti-sodomy have criminalized homosexual behavior. Furthermore, groups have been 'empowered' by such laws to lynch blacks, rape women and bash Gays & Lesbians with impunity. In city after city with anti-homeless legislation, homeless people are made sport-of and are attacked, set afire and murdered. Is this what we want for Olympia too? As most Olympians and Americans are embarrassed and ashamed by such past laws and their more formal institutions of prison and slavery with which our ancestors and national history has left us; so too will our children be embarrassed and ashamed of our city's and country's present-day segregation laws along the continuum of discrimination and targeted injustice.

How far have we come from the draconian justice of past centuries and the barbaric actions of our peers when crime and sin increasingly becomes defined within the context of a heartless and unfair economic system that creates poverty and homelessness? Imagine (if not by anti-discrimination action in the 70s) women could still not qualify for credit without their father or husband's permission, would Olympia consider an "Aggressive Feminism" ordinance that would criminalize women for questioning males in downtown Olympia since that would threaten the consumer base and economic order? In the context of the proposed ordinances that is not so ridiculous. Neither is an ordinance restricting the 'anti-social behavior' of the informed consumer who questions the quality of their purchase or demands respectful treatment of the business owner.

It is clear both from our government's commentary about the proposed Olympia ordinances and from the ordinances themselves, that the intent and effect is to establish the basis for a police attack on a vulnerable and disadvantaged group on behalf of the more 'advantaged' in Olympia. Such criminalization of poverty and of homeless people is poor public policy because it imposes unnecessary burdens on the criminal justice system. Relying on law enforcement officials and jails to address poverty and related issues, such as unemployment, illiteracy, mental illness, and substance abuse, that are more appropriately handled by service providers, causes problems and widespread frustrations within the criminal justice system. Jails are already overcrowded without detaining individuals who have not committed serious (or even real) crimes.

Criminalization neither provides long-term benefits for poor or homeless individuals (and may interfere with their ability to find subsequent employment) nor does it provide a lasting solution to the conflicts over public space and the economic order. Moreover, it is likely to cost significantly more money. The costs of police time and resources and jailing individuals is substantially higher than the cost of providing them with shelter combined with necessary services. It is not only less expensive to provide supportive housing to poor people than to incarcerate them, but the services associated with supportive housing can potentially move people out of poverty (just as surely as a living-wage job can do).

Adoption of laws and policies that punish poor people rather than addressing the problems that cause them is an ineffective (and bigoted) approach. Penalizing people for engaging in innocent or public behavior will not reduce the occurrence of these activities or keep the poor out of public spaces when they have no alternative place to go or no other means of subsistence. With insufficient resources for shelter and services, imposing punishment for unavoidable activities is not only futile, it is inhumane. Policymakers must recognize the distinction between intolerance of poor people and the intolerance of the manifestations of the problem of poverty. Ultimately, the cycle of poverty will only be broken when policies address the causes and effectively move people into housing or guarantee them a living wage job. Olympia should reject such ordinances and focus its attention on alleviating poverty and eliminating homelessness, rather than criminalizing it.